Discussion-Sept 20

• McKeachie states that during the first few weeks of a course you should go more slowly, "pause to allow students with poor backgrounds time to take notes." Then McKeachie says that you can go faster later on when they have had time to adjust. What if they don't adjust because they are now used to a slower pace?
• How concerned should an Intro teacher be with students mind wandering in class? McKeachie presents a vareity of ways to prevent this from happening, but what is an appropriate balance between providing cues to bring thier attention back, and leaving them to fend for themselves.
• Should you really adjust your lectures as the semester progresses considering McKeachie's idea that "students should be able to process bigger blocks of material more quickly"?
• During lecture, what are some effective ways of keeping students questions and comments on topic?
• Chapter 6 states that the lecturer's own attitudes and enthusiasm have an important effect in student motivation. Research also shows that student ratings say that same thing. Should a professor give an anonomous survey after a couple weeks of lecture to see if their lecture's are effective? Are the students learning? If not, should the professor change teaching styles?
• I like the idea of structuring lectures in a way that facilitates better note-taking, but collecting and reviewing student notes seems unnecessary. I've never heard of this occurring in practice - is it ever done?
• In this chapter, our author puts much emphasis on the idea of lecturers facilitating student learning and helping students to understand the material. This, to me, seems to indicate that we should be more concerned with student understanding than we should be about covering all of the material of the course. However, students take a class not only to understand the material, but also to get an overview of all the materials promised in the course description. How can an effective lecturer take into account not only student understanding, but also the importance of covering all the topics a course offers?